Guess you've settled the argument by ducking and diving the issue then.
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Globalising the Net Neutrality Debate
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Roman4604
Executive Member
No ducking and diving, just an understanding of the underlying motivations. One also needs to understand the background/context of the situation.
The transmission/access provider's answer to the additional capacity demand being generated by the OTT content providers is to introduce what has been dubbed the "lane system". Traffic transiting their networks (and thus generating cost) is classified into paid-for and not-paid-for groups with the former getting the fast lane through their network and the latter getting the not so fast lane. This obviously breaks the OTT provider's business, so how do they fight back? By coming up with a cunning plan to garner public support to pressurise/lobby the US regulator, the FCC, to block the carriers from implementing the lane system.
So in reality there is no righteous crusade by the the public and a few content corporations to improve the quality of Internet connections for the end user, rather its just a cunning plan for the content providers to stick it to the carriers and protect their bottom lines.
This ^
Chevron
Serial breaker of phones
Your ISP is just scared of becoming just a pipe for data. At least the mobile companies are doing something about it by offering triple play services. You're just trying to extort the big players without adding any value at all.
Roman4604
Executive Member
Sheez, taking things for granted a bit. The large carrier/access networks in the US dont need to add any additional value since they are the actual core fabric of the Internet. Remove them and all you have is a bunch of isolated data centers.
There isn't enough radio frequency spectrum in physical world for the mobile networks to play a meaningful part in mass content streaming, at best they can dabble.
Your views seem to be coming from a bygone era of naive Internet idealism. The Internet of today is fully commercialised, largely funded by corporations with little time for idealistic crusades. Like in normal business, he who uses more, pays more, is the principal used, so no streaming for mahala (or at a fraction of what it should cost).
"The large carrier/access networks in the US" support Net Neutrality
Where you measure size in number of packets being moved or consider what "the actual core fabric of the Internet" is. Opponents of net neutrality aren't the largest - in terms of scope of investment in Internet infrastructure and/or gross network bandwidth.
Cable operators are not the most heavily invested in Internet infrastructure
Where you measure size in number of packets being moved or consider what "the actual core fabric of the Internet" is. Opponents of net neutrality aren't the largest - in terms of scope of investment in Internet infrastructure and/or gross network bandwidth.
Cable operators are not the most heavily invested in Internet infrastructure
Chevron
Serial breaker of phones
As Paul pointed out, the biggest companies against net neutrality are the ISPs trying to extort cash from easy targets.
Who says the content has to be delivered wirelessly? International wireless operators have begun purchasing fixed line providers.
And your point of view is from an ISP that's increasingly becoming irrelevant in the grand scheme of things so using extortion to remain relevant.
They do. They pay their hosting provider. Again you're just trying to double charge people to get access to profits you have no right to.
Bits on the internet are just bits. What about a large portion of internet traffic that's torrents? I guess it's ok that they use all the bandwidth they do as there's no company to charge. Netflix is just an easy target to extort plain and simple. And the only reason it worked in the US as there isn't as much competition in the ISP space so no where for customers to go if their only ISP in the area starts to throttle Netflix.
It's extortion in every sense of the word.
That seems to be related to you. For years ISPs have been fleecing users by making them pay more for the service they should have by default. Things are finally changing and small ISPs rather than adapting to a new model are trying to fight it tooth and nail. There's nothing wrong with priority services but we all know that isn't what shaping is. ISPs deliberately degrade some protocols even ones used for gaming to force users to cough up more just so their traffic can receive equal priority.
Nobody ever said anything about streaming for mahala. Your arguments are pure nonsense. Netflix for one has a much fatter pipe than any standard hosting company has and they pay a rather large amount for it. What their ISP does with that money and whether they invest it in infrastructure is their business apart from the fact that they should still provide a good service to all.
Roman4604
Executive Member
Often difficult to classify what they are, as there aren't too many 'pure plays' left. For example the likes of Comcast would be as close as you get to a pure access cable operator, on the other hand the likes of Verizon are a cable, fiber & mobile operator and carrier all rolled into one. Hence my use of the generic term transmission provider, referring to anyone in the business of moving bits around, collectively these entities make up the core fabric of the Internet, after all, it is fundamentally a communication network, on top of which everything else is layered e.g. WWW and OTT content etc.
Agreed, OTT, torrents, NNTP etc. are all similar in their impact, one which causes the US cable operators to behave the way they do, and coincidentally is root cause of a lot of the flak against SA ISPs on this forum. Again some background/context is required to understand why;
For Internet Access Services there are two broad classes of products offered;
(a) Dedicated/Business/Leased Line - this product offering is designed with a view that the service will be heavily utilised (saturated) most of the time, therefore the upstream infrastructure is expanded adequately to ensure additional dedicated capacity for each new link. Obviously this type of product is costed such that all the upstream capacity increases are recovered in the price, thus resulting in these products being quite pricey (at least for the man in the street).
(b) Shared/Broadband - this type of product offering takes advantage of the light/sporadic capacity demands of most consumers (when using applications like WWW and mail), allowing for upstream capacity to be shared. The price of these products factors in this sharing of network capacity/resources and thus results in them being far cheaper than (a).
Back to the issue at hand, when the mentioned applications (OTT, torrents, NNTP etc.) are used by a consumer, they result in capacity/resource demands on the network of (a), but only the income of (b). So from the operator's perspective this service is running at a loss. In the US case, the cable operators blame the OTT providers like Netflix for breaking the sharing balance on their network and are therefore are demanding compensation from them, otherwise they'll technically degrade the performance of the OTT's traffic to their broadband customers.
Locally this situation is similar for download applications like torrents and NNTP, but with these there is no central organisation to go demand compensation from, so they jump straight to the technical degradation solution, which we locally know as 'shaping'.
Chevron
Serial breaker of phones
And there you highlighted the problem which I did at the start of the thread.
The average internet user is using more data. Instead of charging them more, you want to charge the companies offering the services which is retarded. Your argument only works in the uncapped context anyway. Capped users use more, so pay more.
And your argument doesn't work in SA as uncapped here has fup unless you're paying for business uncapped.
It doesn't matter how you try to slice players the fact is that the LARGEST players with the most skin in the game all support network neutrality with respect to the backbone of the Internet; what most players are against is regulatory interventions to impose (or as is actually the core issue remove existing legal obligations that underpin net neutrality with respect to cable operators) which is quite different to the nonsensical argument you are running.
The question of fast and slow lanes has a very different dynamic that you aren't even touching on.
NO
Even if there was a central organization to go to there would be an inability to demand compensation for transit
Net Neutrality violations would be an ISP shaping torrents except for torrents whitelisted where a whitelisting body is paying over revenue.
Roman4604
Executive Member
The two I mentioned (Comcast & Verizon) obviously don't .... http://www.theverge.com/2014/4/28/5662580/netflix-signs-traffic-deal-with-verizon
Chevron
Serial breaker of phones
Two large ISPs in a market with very little competition that are trying to capitalize on their market position by extorting their customers.
Not exactly great examples.
Roman4604
Executive Member
What are you going on about. Paul posted a view that the large players on the Internet support net neutrality, I posted an article indicating Netflix had signed deals with Comcast and Verizon for unfettered access to their (broadband) customers. Thus if they're demanding/getting financial compensation, they cant be supporters of net neutrality.
I don't really think the companies involved are making moral choices here, its just a case of;if its financially beneficial for them ,they support it, if its not, they're against it. This is what I meant when I said previously net neutrality doesn't really exist (as a moral movement for equality spearheaded by well-to-do companies), its just companies (on both sides) looking after their financials.
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Chevron
Serial breaker of phones
Now you're changing your argument. That's what I've been saying all along. I know Comcast and Netflix have made a deal. And it's wrong. They abused their marketing position because they operate in a virtual monopoly. That's why we need net neutrality to stop big ISPs extorting their clients, and other online service providers. It's the same reason we have anti-trust laws.
Roman4604
Executive Member
Why because it doesn't suit your personal needs?
But they aren't strictly extorting their clients, if they were they'd raise their broadband access prices for those wanting to use Netflix. Instead they demand that Netflix (not their customer) pays them, which in turn would eventually require Netflix to raise its pricing to it's customers. For the cable operators this is fairer, as the provider and subscribers creating the additional capacity/resource load/cost, would be footing the bill.
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For the same reason we don't pay different amounts for petrol whether we are taking kids to school, going to work, or going on holiday. ISPs are just taking advantage of a strange quirk wrt the internet in that you can actually see what someone is using it for. In SA that is illegal to do though as you're not allowed to snoop on someone's data. They are still exploiting the loophole of looking at ports though and that needs to be fixed.
Both are their clients. ISPs however have this mentality that they can take money both from the content consumer and the content distributor. It's this culture of double charging that needs to change.